Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition by Anthony Elliott

Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition by Anthony Elliott

In this wide-ranging study, Anthony Elliott provides a comprehensive and critical survey of contemporary contributions to social and psychoanalytic theory. Developing a line of analysis strongly grounded in the European tradition, he examines the importance of psychoanalysis for opening new interpretative strategies for critical social theory in relation to the self. The book begins with a reconsideration of the importance of Freud for social and political theory. In doing so it considers anew the relation between self and society, bringing a distinctive viewpoint to bear upon many contested issues in this area. This paves the way for concise and critical analyses of the leading theories in social and psychoanalytic thought - including critical theory, Lacanian and post-Lacanian thought, post-structuralism and feminism. Elliott provides lucid interpretations of the thought of Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Lacan, Althusser, Laclau and Mouffe, Zizek, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva, Castoriadis, and others. The purpose of this survey is constructive in character: through a critique of these leading theories, Elliott formulates the contours of a novel account of the relations between self and society. Contemporary researchers, he argues, have falsely downgraded the profoundly imaginary character of the self and social reproduction. In this connection, he argues for the importance of the imaginary and the unconscious as key concepts through which issues about the self and self-identity, ideology and power, sexual difference and gender, should be sustained.

Anthony Elliott is Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia, where he is Research Professor of Sociology and Chancellery Dean of External Engagement. He is Super-Global Professor of Sociology (Visiting) at Keio University, Japan, and Visiting Professor of Sociology at UCD, Ireland. Professor Elliott studied at the Universities of Melbourne and Cambridge, where he was supervised by Lord Anthony Giddens. He was previously Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and was Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Flinders University, Australia. Professor Elliott is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and a member of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author and editor of some 40 books, which have been translated or are forthcoming in 17 languages. His recent books include Identity (4 volumes), Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction, The New Individualism (with Charles Lemert), Mobile Lives (with John Urry), On Society (with Bryan S. Turner), Reinvention, Identity Troubles, and The Culture of AI. He is best known for Concepts of the Self, which has been in continuous print for 20 years and across three editions.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780631183280
ISBN 10	0631183280
Title	Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition
Author	Anthony Elliott
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Year published	1992-08-13
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.